A very basic criticism faced by any marketer or an ad agency
is that Advertising creates
artificial desire. To explain artificial is lack of information given by the
advertisement itself or making people feel unpleasant to sell products.
To explain it better let me give you few examples.
Automobile companies run Advertising campaigns without sharing information on the risk of the product. Automobile companies do position their brands without giving details of the safety issues and standards of their products. The Automotive Industry Standards (AIS) are the automotive technical specifications of India. AIS have been slammed for not enforcing passenger safety norms. As a result, vehicles sold in India often do not meet safety requirements, Some of India's best-selling small cars have failed independent crash tests conducted by a global car safety watchdog -Global NCAP. This shows the gap in advertising communications run by leading advertising agencies in India. India is the world's sixth-largest car market but India is also the country with the highest number of deaths due to road accidents in the world. So the question asked for it is - Is it not the responsibility of these automobile companies to warn us about their safety standards?
Another major issue raised is the Advertising campaign of fairness creams. These campaigns also become a point of contention when it comes to artificial demand creation by these campaigns. These campaigns makes the person with dark completion feel unpleasant by promoting bias against those who are not fair, resulting in a artificial desire for the fairness cream.
In modern civilization brands are part of our life. Our relation with brands is growing all the time. Brands engage with us and us with them. The brands we care about are invited into our lives, facebook is one of many. So it is fair that we question these brands. Today social media and even traditional media stand as a watch dog. My writing this blog explains this. The impact of social media has changed the way brands communicate. People have more than just legal mechanism to voice their concerns. With social media everybody can have their opinions and more importantly make them public.
There are top agencies with big brands involved so are these advertising agencies really at fault in each of these cases?
It's important to give advertising agencies an equal opportunity. Reputations are built over years, but can be destroyed by some hasty or irresponsible comment by opinion leaders. Negative news travels faster than positive.
We have to understand that these advertising agencies are part of our society and people working aremuch like the general public. Messaging work is by Indians for Indians - even if adapted. This has its own effect on the work produced that is the advertisement produced has social shades in it with social sensitivity. These agencies have log term goals and want to stay in the market for long. So they do not want to create controversies as they need to be stable and be in position to serve there customer for long. Short-termism can hurt them; they are, thus, very conscious of it. They also have strong legal and commercial departments, which ensure everything is done cautiously. No one wants negative publicity or legal action.
We must understand that advertising is a indicator of culture. Much as marketing and advertising talk about shaping consumer attitudes, beliefs and behaviour, they most often ride on something that exists in culture and society.
The continued existence of the desire for
fairness in Indian society cannot be attributed to fairness creams and their
promotion. It comes from a deep cultural indoctrination of "fair is
beautiful and good" and "dark is ugly and bad". For example,
consider our mythology and the way it is communicated in Indian society. It is
either through comic books such Amar Chitra Katha or through the oral tradition
of grandparents telling stories to grandchildren. Shakuntala is shown and
described as fair and beautiful; the rakshasi (female demon) is dark and ugly.
It is agued at times that the fairness creams are actually providing a solution to this deep-seated bias and helping to build a colour-equal society. This does not mean that advertising should continue to drive colour discrimination.
Now for the safety standards it needs to be balanced with the evaluation of the safety standards maybe at times local products that often are much less safe.
the car example mentioned branded
and marketed products need to meet up to standards laid down by the law of the
land, and this could evolve over time. Making false claims is wrong; but making
the product pluses exciting is the job of marketing and advertising - and that
right needs to be protected.
As society evolves, marketing will get more aggressive;
messaging and brands will become more omnipresent.
Most professional marketers
- big advertisers - are sensitive to cultural. Hurting consumers is not going
to benefit them in the long run. So we must take advertisers perspective in
mind.
